All Forum Posts by: Jennifer Ruelens

If you feel you can handle the non paying tenants and all the eviction activity that can require, especially in this environment of eviction moratoriums you may have a great deal on your hands.  If you are confident you can clean this situation up, make an offer for delivering the building vacant or you take it with tenants in place.  Obviously the latter is significantly discounted.  What is great about that is it communicates that this asset as is isn't worth many people buying.  If you can handle it you should get it at a deep discount.  Or they can clean up their own problems and sell it for more. 

Interesting perspective, Joe and I am sure that is true based on your experience. I stabilize portfolios from 1 to 100 units all the time.  It is sometimes the maintenance on the buildings, but it is usually the way the leases are written, enforced, and the inexperience of the property owner in making decisions.  I save these portfolios from the mistakes the owners make with them.  So based on my extensive experience, I gave the best advice I could give to the question.  

I find that the best approach is to evict or terminate the lease when you have lease violators who will not comply.  If you find that your lease was deficient for this unorthodox arrangement, edit it and try to get it right the next time.  The best answer is the simplest one and getting involved in that drama is not the simplest answer. 

I don't have a specific PMC to refer, but I HIGHLY recommend looking for a NARPM member and not just any PMC.  You can look about halfway down the home page and there is a search function for finding a member.  Good luck! https://www.narpm.org/

I think Temple has a good real estate program and Penn State has a great MBA program (lots of Veterans were in my class!) and a real estate program.  When I did my MBA I concentrated in Finance (honestly that is mostly what development is) and real estate.  I love my real estate classes there. 

Cap rates are indicators of risk, I am in north central PA and we often find investors coming here attracted to our high cap rates but they have the same expectations of risk as you have in a low cap market.  Reasons our cap rates are higher in my market? Housing stock is OLD, low availability of QUALITY services for investors, local economy stuff (dying industries, high taxes, etc.).  My best advice is to base where you invest on where you can get quality advisors who know the area and can work you through those market challenges.  The returns are there, but you have to know the market really well to make them happen. 

I guess it is a question of what is the bet?  How much upside and downside can you expect and what data do you have to help you assume a probability.  DIY Landlording, your upside is that you make the return you expect without paying a PM. Downside is you are very likely to make big costly mistakes. Hiring a PMC, your upside is you make the return you expect and you don't run yourself around trying to learn everything on your own, downside is you pay them for their services and/or you hire a bad one.  I have been a PM for 16 years.  I don't know of many DIY landlords who love this, make the money they expected or if they are being honest are doing well with their mistakes considered.